War Leaves No Survivors
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, oneshot. If Harry and Draco are going to heal after the war, they'll have to do it by themselves. COMPLETE.


**Title: **War Leaves No Survivors

**Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Rating: **R

**Word Count: **~13,700

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Warnings: **DH spoilers, but no epilogue; profanity; violence between characters in the pairing; heavy angst; slash sex.

**Summary: **If Harry and Draco are going to heal after the war, they'll have to do it themselves.

**Author's Notes: **And back to the angst we go. This fic is set at Hogwarts the summer immediately after the last chapter proper of DH (before the epilogue). It is deliberately an odd and somewhat disjointed story, an attempt to deal with some of the pain of the war.

**War Leaves No Survivors**

"You'd be welcome, Harry."

Harry didn't take Ron's lowered eyes and subdued voice personally. God knew that the crippling losses his family had suffered—first Fred gone, and then George almost gone with him—would have affected Harry that way, too.

"I know," Harry said, and hesitated, glancing around. They stood in the boys' bedroom of Gryffindor Tower, where they'd spent the last few days discussing plans for next year and resting after they helped to clean up the damage the war had done to Hogwarts and attended funerals. But no one else was there now, though Seamus, Dean, and Neville had been in and out, as had Dennis Creevey, who wanted Harry's company after the death of his brother. Because they were alone, Harry risked giving Ron a quick, one-armed hug. "But I'm staying here as much for myself as anything. I need to think, and it's hard to do that at the Burrow."

Ron gave him a watery smile. "You got that right. That's why I'm going there. I don't want to think. Hermione's wonderful, but—" His jaw tightened, and he shook his head.

Harry understood perfectly. Hermione might be wonderful, the same way that Ginny's shining eyes and shy smiles in Harry's direction said she might be, but girls couldn't make up for the losses or the turmoil going on in their heads.

"Go and have fun," Harry said. "And tell Hermione good-bye for me."

"I will." Ron hesitated. "Are you going to stay here all summer, mate?"

"Probably," Harry said, surprised into honesty. Then he rushed for an explanation. "I mean, I'll visit you sometimes, but—"

"Because Hermione and I are going to Australia sometime this summer, to find her parents." Ron looked at him with yearning, and also from a distance, Harry thought, as if one of them stood on a boat that was floating away from the shore, leaving the other one behind. "You could come along."

_I'm on the shore, and he's on the boat. Definitely. I can't move on just yet._

"I don't think I can," Harry said. "Not yet. I mean, I'd like to. But." And then he stopped. He shook his head. His own fumbling confused him. Not much that was bad had happened to him in the war. He hadn't lost anyone related to him by blood. He'd killed Voldemort without using the Killing Curse. He'd suffered the same trials and dangers that Ron and Hermione had, and Hermione had even gone through worse, when Bellatrix tortured her in Malfoy Manor. He didn't understand the great hollow feeling inside him, the temptation to collapse on the bed and sleep for days and days, the craving for solitude.

_It's like what you hear about people suffering after a war, the survivors, _he thought. _But I'm not a survivor. I lived. I won. I don't understand this. _

There were deaths, yes, but they should affect people like Ron and Teddy Lupin and Andromeda Tonks, not him. Maybe one good reason to stay at the school was to sort himself out, Harry thought. He didn't want to go back to Ginny or accompany Ron and Hermione to Australia when he didn't understand his own reactions.

"I know." Ron smiled awkwardly at him, shook his hand, and then turned and loped down the stairs.

Harry cast himself back on the bed and stared out the window, frowning. The day was warm and bright, though the sky was edged by clouds to the west and north. A brisk breeze stirred the tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest. A good day for flying, Harry thought. He should go out and fly. He couldn't remember the last time he'd flown purely and simply for pleasure, and not as a matter of life and death.

He should get out of bed and get his broom.

He _should. _But he curled up on the coverlet and fell asleep, instead.

*

Draco knew who stood there the moment the shadow fell across him. He tensed, but didn't look up. Instead, he just kept casting _Scourgify _on the floor in front of him with the hawthorn wand that Potter had miraculously returned, cleaning off the stone dust left by the rubble of the falling roof.

"Draco." Lucius tried to sound stern, but there was a tremor to his tone that always betrayed him, now. Or maybe Draco just thought he heard that tremor, as a symbol of the general weakness his father concealed so well. He had seen his parents both weak during the war, trapped as prisoners in their own home, and of course, he thought, that would affect his perception of them.

"This is nonsense," Lucius said, "this staying and helping. You did not cause this mess. Come home, now."

A sudden flaring of incandescent rage seized Draco. That was always happening now, and he never knew when it would, or how to prevent it. He swung around to face his father, and Lucius actually took a step back at whatever he saw in Draco's eyes. Once, Draco would have crowed about that, but now it gave him no joy.

_We're broken. We're all so broken and _I hate it.

"It's not home to me," Draco said. His voice wavered and dived, but though Lucius clenched his hands, he did not lean close to hear. Draco thought he could have hated his father as much as he hated Bellatrix then, just for that. _He won't show weakness, but he's weak! Why can't he get used to it? _"I had to torture people there. How can it be home?"

"You did not torture people of your own free will," Lucius said, smoothly and simply, as if he really believed that his words would make a difference. "The Dark Lord commanded you to." He did move towards Draco now, but his neck was stiff and his head lifted and carried like a horse's, and Draco knew he was trying to win back the intimidating position again. "He is _dead_, Draco."

Draco laughed, and the sound broke and fell to the ground like the windows that had broken in the walls around them. "And you think that makes a difference?"

"It should." Lucius lowered his voice impressively. "We are Malfoys."

"Oh, fuck that," Draco said, turning away and casting _Scourgify _again. He realized a moment later that he'd cast it on a patch of the floor he'd already cleaned. The wave of fury that ran through him left him feeling faint and dizzy. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to regain control of himself, as far as he possibly could. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Draco." Now Lucius was at his most pompous, and Draco knew without looking that he would have lifted his chin, his eyes focused on something in the hazy distance that would seem of more importance than the person in front of him. Draco hated that, too. "It means pride. It means continuance. It means tradition. It means—"

"It means fuck-all," Draco said flatly. "With—" He'd stopped. He'd been about to talk about the lack of respect he saw in so many eyes since the Battle of Hogwarts, the utter indifference where people would once have shown wariness or outright fear. But the truth was simpler than that, and anyway, he thought Lucius had seen the indifference for himself; he just refused to believe in it.

"Father," Draco said. "There's been a war."

"Thank you for informing me of that undeniable fact, Draco."

Draco laughed, and the sound broke again, spiraled out of control until he was choking, leaning on a wall, wiping spittle from his lips. He was vaguely aware of Lucius staring at him in horror, but that didn't matter, either. Not when Lucius was unable to grasp the simplest reasons for that laughter.

"Undeniable? Ha. You're _working _to deny it," he said, the words feeling as thick in his throat as the blood had when Fenrir Greyback punched him in the mouth over Christmas holidays and broke one of his teeth. He stood upright and pivoted around to face Lucius. "You want to pretend nothing changed. You'll want me to come home and sit around in the rooms where we watched people _die_ and take my NEWTS next year and get married even though I still have nightmares every night."

"Time will patch the wounds, Draco." His father's voice carried a tinge of uncertainty, but no more than that.

Draco fired a hex. His wand moved without his brain willing it; his voice emerged in the single word that the hex embodied without his knowing it would do so. The spell missed as Lucius flinched violently.

And only then Draco realize, hearing the echo of his voice hanging in the air, that the spell had not been a hex. He had said _Crucio_.

"Get out," he told his father, who was staring at him with frightened, alien eyes. "I'm staying here for the summer." And he turned away and went back to cleaning up stone dust, listening to the sound of his father's footsteps hastily retreating.

Only when he was sure they were gone did Draco fold himself to the floor and crouch with his hands over his face, breathing unsteadily. He waited for tears, but his eyes remained desert-dry.

*

"Avada Kedavra!"

_This time, when the Killing Curse struck, blackness spread away from the place it hit him in the chest, and consumed him, and Harry found himself falling into the abyss, with no chance of return._

_And it was everything he wanted, it was peace, an ending to anxiety—_

Harry woke with his heart beating so fast that he was surprised he was able to hear a bell clanging through the castle. He swallowed and sat up, his head swirling, ignoring the bell for a moment as he tried to concentrate on the dream.

_Why did I think about that? That can't be a vision, Voldemort's dead. And killing him was no worse than killing the basilisk or seeing Cedric die, and I didn't have so many nightmares after that. _

Harry groaned and dragged a hand over his forehead, smearing the sweat to the corners of his eyes. He could have dealt with these reactions if he just _understood _them. What had happened to him during the war wasn't so terribly traumatic. Voldemort had killed him, but he hadn't tortured Harry first. The Killing Curse was painless. And he had seen that vision of Dumbledore—whether it was real or not, Harry still had no idea—who comforted him and explained everything and sent him back.

That was the real reason he couldn't understand why he was reacting with nightmares and the hollow feeling. He'd survived. That should be enough.

The bell rang again, and then Kreacher appeared in front of Harry's bed and bowed to him. "Master Harry is coming to dinner!" he squeaked. "The Headmistress is announcing tasks for everyone's staying in the castle over summertime!"

Harry thought about saying that he wasn't hungry. And, most of the time, he wasn't, now. He just didn't want to eat, because food didn't satisfy the hollow feeling inside him.

But if he was supposed to know what he was doing this summer, he reckoned he should attend the dinner.

"All right, Kreacher," he said, and waited until the house-elf disappeared before he went about the difficult task of persuading his feet to move to the floor.

*

Draco glanced around the room with a sneer that he didn't bother to conceal. The assortment in the Great Hall, gathered around the single table that was sufficient to hold them all, was motley. Orphans, people whose families didn't want or need them close, the teachers who hadn't been so badly injured in the battle that they still required rest in the infirmary—they huddled at the table under an enchanted ceiling that at the moment looked pathetic instead of grand. Who cared about magic that let it mimic the sky overhead? What in the world had that magic done to save them when the Death Eaters invaded?

And he was the only Slytherin.

At least he wasn't the latest. A moment after he took his chair next to the Headmistress herself—probably she hadn't trusted him not to hex people unless he was under her immediate eye—Potter staggered in. His eyes were glassy, his spectacles askew, his hair mussed from obvious sleep. And yet his skin was grainy, and he still looked tired.

_Everyone's tired in the aftermath of the war, _Draco thought brutally, seeing sympathetic glances turn towards Potter from all over the table, people who wouldn't have given him the time of day. _Leave it to Potter to make a drama out of it._

Potter sat down a few seats away from him, between the Mudblood Creevey boy who was clutching his brother's camera and a thin, pale girl from Ravenclaw whom Draco didn't know, but whom he had seen screaming as she fled through the corridors more than once. McGonagall rose to her feet to address them. Of everyone in the room, Draco thought, she was the only one who looked as if she thought of victory instead of defeat.

"I am grateful for your volunteering of your time and effort to cleanse Hogwarts and restore it to what it is supposed to be," she began briskly. "It is my hope that we will have the school open in time for the students to return in September."

Draco concealed an incredulous snort with difficulty. It was early June. She thought _that _was a reasonable goal?

_But then, _he thought, as his gaze went to Potter down the table again, _Gryffindors aren't concerned with reasonable goals most of the time. Such as tidiness. _

"To that end," said McGonagall, and waved her wand in a Summoning motion that made scrolls swoop towards her from every corner of the room, "I have created a list of tasks, with names beside each one, that we must accomplish in order to have the barest minimum of cleanliness and the maximum of safety set up before September. I will expect everyone to do the tasks assigned. Mere dislike of someone you are assigned to work with—" her glasses glinted as she looked at Draco and Potter for a moment "—ought not to preclude you from making your best effort."

Draco sneered at her out of habit, and then looked over the list. Most of the tasks were simple things: clearing rubble, removing hexes that the Death Eaters had left behind on doors and corners, repairing windows. Others were heavier and would require some study, in books whose titles McGonagall had provided, before they were tackled: removing the residue of Dark spells, strengthening and replacing stones, creating new wards.

Draco was assigned to a cleaning rotation and to replacement of the stones in the collapsed wing with Potter.

He lifted his eyes and looked down the table, to find Potter peering at him. But he said nothing, only looked away from Draco towards McGonagall, who was talking again to exhort them to teamwork.

Draco stifled a bitter laugh as he crumpled up the scroll and stuck it in his pocket. _Some things never do change. The Headmistress is what Granger will grow up to be, I'm a disappointment to my father, and Potter still hates me._

But one thing had changed. The directionless fire burning in him, the flame that had made him cast an Unforgivable Curse at his father, now had a target.

*

Harry was flying, by the light of a full moon.

He had gone from requiring too much sleep, barely dragging himself out of bed at noon and meeting Malfoy and Dennis and the others for their work, to needing no sleep. Or, rather, though he wanted to rest, he no sooner lay down than his nerves began to jangle and jar, and the images of his nightmares came back and crouched on his chest and made him feel like he couldn't breathe.

He had found himself sitting up on his bed earlier tonight, wand in hand, scanning the room and breathing frantically.

So he had decided to go flying. He had simply walked down to the Quidditch pitch, taken one of the school brooms out of the shed, and hopped aboard. No one had bothered to lock the shed. Why would anyone want to steal from a devastated school?

Harry tilted his face into the wind, closed his eyes, and made several tight loops over the Quidditch pitch. As he flew, they grew sharper and sharper, steeper and steeper, until he was feeling the drag of air against his skin and hearing the broom groan and creak under him.

Maybe he could drown his nervousness in this whirlpool. If he could make himself dizzy, if he could vomit, then he could—

And then something slammed into him from the side with the force of a Bludger, nearly knocking him from the broom.

Harry gripped the broom and wheeled down, his eyes open, gasping. The stunning pain was already spreading across his side, arching in fierce white lightning across the back of his fingers and head. Once again, his nerves jangled and jarred, but this time the cause was far more apparent.

And, for the first time since the end of the war, he unlocked his anger.

"Malfoy!" he roared, catching himself a few feet above the ground and wheeling about. He never doubted who it had been, even though, logically, with over thirty people in the school, it could have been any one of them, or even a Death Eater who had got loose and come back to hunt him. But he _knew_.

And there was a fierce joy in the knowing.

Malfoy fleeted past him like a shadow on his own broom, moving faster than Harry. His head was turned towards him, his chin and cheeks too sharp, too _pointy._ He laughed mockingly, and gestured the second Bludger following him towards Harry, with a flick of his wand that reminded Harry of second year and Dobby.

Dobby. Who was dead. Because of people like Malfoy. Because of _Malfoy. _He never would have died if Malfoy hadn't kept people in the dungeons of that stupid house of his.

Harry avoided the second Bludger with contemptuous ease, then flipped upside-down. Malfoy hesitated a moment, as if he hoped Harry would fall to the ground and save him the trouble of killing him, or more likely because he had to adjust the angle of the next spell he had planned to cast.

"_Aboleo_," Harry whispered, his wand aimed at the broom that Malfoy rode.

The wood and the bristles began to disintegrate beneath Malfoy. He gave a startled yelp, but the next moment he was laughing, as madly as Harry wanted to.

_Why should I just want to? _And he gave voice to it, the laughter wide and ringing and empty as the hollow place inside him. Malfoy cocked his head to listen to it, smirked, and then jumped off into midair.

Of course Harry was there to catch him, which the bastard must have planned on. He landed facing Harry, gripping the broom with his knees as he leaned forwards and tried to punch Harry in the face.

Harry seized his arm and held it back. His wand spiraled free from his grip and towards the ground. Harry didn't mind, was glad, even though the evidence was strong that Malfoy probably still had his wand. The other boy attacking this way was a clear sign that they were going to hang in the air and try to beat the shit out of each other. That was perfectly fine with Harry.

Malfoy struggled against him, trying to pull his arm free. Harry concentrated on holding him back—too much. Malfoy brought his other fist up and hit him in the chin. Harry's head snapped back, all the muscles in his neck going tight the way they did in some of his nightmares when he lay on the ground and offered his throat to Voldemort so that he could cut it with a knife.

_But that didn't happen, and this is really happening, _he reminded himself, as yet another punch cracked home and split his lip.

Harry gave up on holding Malfoy back and instead tilted the broom so that Malfoy was sliding towards the ground. His eyes widened and his breathing became quick, but a faint, dark smile still lingered on his face, and he was using his hands to hurt instead of hang on.

Harry punched him in the side. Malfoy caught him there, too, and made his own wound from the Bludger ache. Harry whimpered, sure he had bruised ribs, but the sound was lost in Malfoy's high laugh of pleasure.

Then Malfoy was back to grunting as Harry caught him hard with a knee in the groin and a jab to the forehead. Malfoy struck back with an elbow that Harry met with his own elbow, an unexpectedly ringing blow. Harry blacked his eyes, one and then the other, hot happiness and malice racing through him like bile.

Then they met the ground, and Harry tumbled backwards off the broom. Malfoy fell on top of him, and grabbed his throat.

_He's trying to choke me to death, _Harry thought, almost calmly, although bloody darkness was invading his vision and his throat was already sore. He aimed himself carefully and then brought his head up with an enormous effort, using the pull of Malfoy's hands more than his own strength to accomplish it, slamming his forehead into Malfoy's nose.

And then—

Then, it was as if it were enough.

Malfoy lowered his head until his dripping nose rested against Harry's cheek. Harry suffered a brief, painful memory of the day he had visited Andromeda, the day right after the war, and held Teddy in his arms. But this was blood, not snot, the way the liquid running from Teddy's nose had been, and something in it made Harry turn towards the other boy and throw an arm around his neck.

Malfoy sighed, the sound shaking his body. "No one cares about me anymore," he whispered. "No one flinches when I walk by, or thinks of what I'll report to my father if they hurt me. No one cares." He paused, and Harry could feel the words stretching between them like long strings of hot chocolate at Florean Fortescue's. Except that Fortescue was gone now, and who knew if the ice cream shop would even reopen? "Except you."

"I needed that," Harry said. "It gets rid of the hollow feeling." He didn't care about what Malfoy was saying, not really. It was just the chance to talk that meant something to him, to get the words out.

"It gets rid of the temptation to throw curses everywhere."

"I didn't make enough people bleed during the war. I wanted to make you bleed."

"You used my wand to kill him."

"He killed himself."

They were drifting back towards each other again, and already the blissful emptiness that held Harry was being filled with unwelcome memories. He shoved at Malfoy's shoulders, and Malfoy responded by letting his body weigh more. He clutched Harry's shoulders and stared into his eyes.

"We aren't going to tell McGonagall about this," he said.

Harry laughed, and the laugh was tainted, but not as it had been in the last few weeks, with mechanical uncertainty, because he was laughing to gratify someone else. This humor, he really felt. "Fuck, no," he said. "You gave me back my anger, Malfoy." He paused. "And maybe you'll do it again."

Malfoy smirked. Harry shouldn't have been able to see the expression with his glasses cracked from one of Malfoy's punches, but this close, it seemed easy to do so.

"Yes, I will," he said, and it was the first promise Harry had trusted since Voldemort died.

*

Draco woke with a feeling of immense quiet in himself. He blinked at the ceiling for long moments, then rose from the bed and walked slowly towards the window that looked out over the lake.

After the war, he couldn't stay in the dungeons. He saw Vincent everywhere, and the Slytherins who hadn't been brave enough to pick and stay with a side during the Battle of Hogwarts, including himself. So he had appropriated a small classroom once used for Defense Against the Dark Arts dueling practice on the third floor. No one had cared.

_Because no one cares about me, _he thought, but then he remembered Potter, and a slow smile worked its way across his face.

He leaned on the windowsill for endless moments, regarding the prospect before him. The sunrise blazed in the lake-water, extending tendrils of lacy gold to touch the far shore. The sky was gold, too, with blue chipping away at the gold like hens' teeth. Draco could hear an unfamiliar bird calling from the edge of the Forbidden Forest, one trill, one sharp jab of a note, and then pause and repeat.

It was the first time he had paid attention to the world since the Dark Lord died.

He turned away and went to prepare himself for the cleaning routine of the morning. He had to glance at his crumpled scroll to remember what it was: checking the stone of the collapsed wing for cracks.

Potter would be with him.

For no reason, Draco wanted to laugh, and to lash out.

*

Malfoy was watching him.

Harry knew it, but he didn't look up from his work. They had used spells to strengthen their eyes, because they had to examine the rocks for hairline fractures. As much as possible, Headmistress McGonagall wanted to use the material of Hogwarts to rebuild Hogwarts, but they couldn't use it if it was unsafe. And the slightest weakness might make building material unsafe.

To imagine the wing crashing down again, to imagine sprawled bodies amidst ruin—

The hollow feeling sang in Harry again like a tapped wineglass, and he pulled himself sharply back. No. No, he wouldn't think of that. He'd thought too often of the reality, of Fred's death, had _seen _the reality too often.

Instead, he thought of Malfoy's eyes, and carefully, unobtrusively, worked himself around to a corner of the wall where he was at a distance from the others and half-hidden from sight by a pile of shattered stone slabs, not unstable enough to be dangerous. It was a place that someone could find him and speak to him without much fear of being overheard.

If that person _wanted _to, at least.

Footsteps sounded behind him, but Harry didn't look up, still. He had discovered a crack that turned into a messy web of lines towards the edge of the stone. He tapped it with his wand and cast the spell that would mark this particular boulder with a red light, signaling it was unsafe to use.

An arm leaned heavily against the nape of his neck. Harry arched his neck slightly in response. The bruises around his throat where Malfoy had tried to choke him, hidden by glamours, throbbed as if in response.

"I almost cursed my father with the Cruciatus," Malfoy breathed into Harry's ear, his breath as warm as a lover's.

"He doesn't hate you for it," Harry said.

A creaky, windy sigh in his ear. "Let's stick to giving each other what we know we can give, Potter, shall we?" Malfoy drawled. "You can't possibly know what my father would feel."

"Yes, I can." Harry turned around to face Malfoy. He had used glamours to conceal his injuries, too, well enough that Harry could only tell they were there by the slight fuzziness about his eyes and the slightly-too-perfect line of his nose. He reached up and let his hand hover in front of Malfoy's nose for a moment. Malfoy's breathing deepened, and he twisted his face towards Harry. "I heard him talking to Voldemort during the battle. The only thing he wanted to know was what had happened to you. You're special to him, Malfoy."

Malfoy froze, his smile still in place, but his half-disguised face turned to stone.

"And your mother," Harry continued, the words dripping, driving, springing out of him, relentlessly, as much as if they were the insults he had used to hurl at Malfoy in school, hoping against hope that they hurt.

"What about my mother?" Malfoy was moving again, leaning close as if he would kiss Harry.

"She loves you," Harry said. "She helped me in the Forest. She lied to Voldemort for me, telling him that I was dead after his Killing Curse hit me. But she only did it when I told her you were still alive."

Malfoy closed his eyes. A breeze coming in through the tumbled wall ruffled his hair. Harry admired it abstractly. When he didn't think about whose face this was, the hair was half-handsome.

"You're lying," Malfoy sighed. "Lying just like she did."

"No." Harry raised his hand and pressed on Malfoy's chest, where he'd hit him. Malfoy grunted, but otherwise his breathing didn't change. "It's the only reason I survived." The words he hadn't meant to say, really _hadn't _meant to say, even though he'd thought them, rushed out of him then. "And even if you cast Cruciatus at your father, that doesn't mean you meant it all the other times you said it."

"The other times I said it," Malfoy murmured, opening his eyes. They stared at Harry as blankly as two specks of granite.

"The time you tried to hurt me when I caught you in the bathroom during our sixth year," said Harry. "I didn't know if it would have landed, but I still responded with that spell that scarred you. I'm sorry." The words drifted like ashes away from his lips, as light and as empty.

Malfoy inclined his head, which could have meant acceptance or just a sign that he was listening. Harry didn't care. _He_ was continuing.

"And the times when you tortured people because Voldemort ordered you to."

At last, Malfoy's face turned white. "How did you know about that?" he whispered. "You're lying. Like he did."

"No," Harry said, and pushed the fringe back from the scar on his forehead. He'd almost forgotten the scar since the Battle, gratefully. It no longer defined his life. But it defined this moment. He traced the line of it with a finger, which Malfoy's gaze followed hungrily. "This gave me a connection to Voldemort. I got visions of what he was doing and thinking and feeling, sometimes. I know that he ordered you to torture people, but you didn't want to. I saw your face. It was disgusted. He had to order you more than once."

"So what does that mean?" Malfoy asked, and there was a sneer breaking around the words, defining the moment the other way. "That I'm one of your perfect, stainless Gryffindors? That I'm _innocent_?"

"No," Harry said. "Just that you were strong enough he couldn't make you want it."

Malfoy turned and broke away from him as if Harry had threatened to kill him. Harry watched him go calmly, and then turned back to his work.

His mood had changed again, to a quiet, floating unreality that was even better, in some ways, than the anger. Maybe he had a real chance to _think_ now, and work out what the bloody hell was wrong with him.

*

_Dear Father, I heard—_

And then Draco crumpled up the letter and threw it away, because there was no way under the sun that he was going to tell his father he had talked to Harry Potter about him, much less what he had _heard _from Harry Potter.

Draco let his head fall back against his chair. The bruises Potter had given him ached steadily. The black eyes he had healed, mostly, because otherwise he would have had difficulty with seeing the work that he needed to do, but he had left the others. They reminded him of the first time for weeks he had felt something other than anger at his family and self-loathing.

And now Potter had given him something else, though Draco had to be suspicious of his motives and therefore of his words.

_On the other hand, _he thought slowly, _what can he have to gain by lying about Mother and Father? I can't imagine that he values my good opinion. And he was right about what the Dark Lord forced me to do._

Draco lifted a shaky hand to brush back the hair from his forehead. His mouth was somehow both sticky and dry at the same time.

He still wanted to write a letter to his father, but he didn't think he was ready yet. He wanted to find Potter and get some more specifics first. If he could pin Potter down to facts, then he would know more about what to believe and what not to.

*

Harry yawned and sat down at the high table rubbing stone dust out of his hair and ears. McGonagall gave him a small smile. "Is the work really that tiring, Mr. Potter?"

"Not so much," said Harry, as he reached for one of the plate of sandwiches the house-elves had put into the middle of the table. "But I haven't been sleeping well the past few nights." That ought to cover any mistakes he made, and he knew others would think it perfectly reasonable for him to have nightmares about the war, even if _he_ knew there was nothing for him to have nightmares _about._

"Ah." McGonagall seemed ready to talk with him alone at the moment, perhaps because he was sitting right next to her and there weren't many other people around. She spread a slice of bread with honey as she seemed to consider a response. Finally she said, quietly, "Have you considered talking to a Mind-Healer at St. Mungo's?"

Harry just barely kept a noisy sigh in. Hermione had said much the same thing before she and Ron went to the Burrow. "I don't think it's that bad," he said.

"What Potter _means _to say," a nasal voice interrupted from behind them, "is that the dreams are driving him absolutely mental and he needs help right now."

Harry glared over his shoulder at Malfoy, who looked no different now than he had ever looked, except for the shimmer of glamours protecting hidden wounds. _Git. Of course he would say something like that. And after all I tried to do for him this morning._

"Madam Pomfrey remained here over the summer for a reason, you know," McGonagall told him gently.

"I know that," Harry said, and was shocked to find himself almost _snapping _at the Headmistress. He stuffed the sandwich he held in his mouth so that he wouldn't be as tempted to say dumb things.

"I think that's quite a keen observation, Headmistress," Malfoy said, and sat down in the chair beside Harry. "I'll be happy to escort Potter to the hospital wing when the meal is done and see that he gets the care he needs."

_Oh, come off it, _Harry thought, wishing, at the moment, that he had telepathy. _She's never going to buy _that. _She knows what you're like. _

But McGonagall appeared to have assumed Dumbledore's stupid optimism about people along with his title. "That will be quite sufficient, Mr. Malfoy," she said. "I am afraid that our Chosen One tends to neglect his health."

And she and Malfoy exchanged condescending _smiles _over Harry's head, exactly as if he were a toddler.

Harry clamped his teeth in the sandwich and used what remained of it to stifle a scream. He was _fine_. He would be _fine. _He didn't _do_ much of anything in the war; he didn't have to torture people like Malfoy did, or teach in an occupied school like McGonagall did. Why couldn't they leave him alone and let him figure out his problems on his own?

Malfoy made it worse by keeping up a steady stream of prattle all through lunch, asking Harry how he'd slept, whether he wanted more food, whether he required help with the stones he was trying to repair, and what he thought of the new portraits the school was planning to have painted in commemoration of the battle. Luckily, that last question got him involved in an intense discussion with one of the Ravenclaw girls who'd remained and apparently knew a bit about magical painting. Harry gratefully let them discuss it whilst he stared out a gap in the walls at the sunlight. It always seemed to be sunny now, and the light was as pure and golden and hollow as he felt.

_I just need time. Time by myself, to think and react the way that I know I can, not the way the rest of the world wants me to. _

When he stood up from the lunch table at last, Malfoy moved smoothly to accompany him. Harry waited until they had put a corridor between themselves and the Great Hall before he whirled on Malfoy and shoved him up against the wall. Malfoy blinked, as if surprised that Harry would do such a thing.

"I don't know what you think you're playing at," Harry told him flatly, "but you've had your revenge, all right? McGonagall wasn't worrying about me, and now she is. I don't know—" He broke off, realizing he'd been about to repeat himself and ask Malfoy what he'd been playing at. "I don't know why this matters to you," he finished, "but just _stop_."

"Potter, you idiot," Malfoy said. "We have some things to talk about concerning my parents and my family, still, and I said what I did to get us out of there and give us some plausible time alone."

Harry blinked and stepped back, his arm dropping from Malfoy's throat. "Oh," he said. "Oh, right, then." His breath was coming short and his head whirling, which he didn't understand. "What did you want to know?"

"Why did the Dark Lord ask my mother to make sure you were still alive?" Malfoy demanded.

"She was the closest Death Eater."

Malfoy rolled his eyes and snorted. "Oh_, please_, Potter. If you want me to believe you're not lying, you'll need to do a little better than that."

And that was when Harry decided that he was fed up. He didn't really care if Malfoy "needed" the truth about his parents to "heal." He'd already told Malfoy everything he knew, and he'd told the truth, and of course the git doubted him, because that was the way he was. Harry must have imagined the relief that fighting with him had meant last night and this morning.

"I don't care if you think I'm lying or not," he told Malfoy. "I have more important things to worry about than you." He turned to walk away.

"Like dreams?" Malfoy called after him nastily.

Harry just kept walking.

"Why don't you just go to Madam Pomfrey and request a Dreamless Sleep potion?" Malfoy continued, sounding bored. "That's what I did a few nights ago. It's not such a chore as you're making it seem, Potter."

"Because I shouldn't be _having _these dreams!" Harry snapped back at him. "Voldemort is dead."

Malfoy's forehead wrinkled. "So what?" he asked. "Everyone is having dreams about the war, I think, and you did more than most."

"No, I didn't," Harry said. "That's the fucking point. I didn't torture, or get tortured. I didn't even kill Voldemort with the Killing Curse. All I did was make sure his own wand turned on himself and die."

"Die," Malfoy said, leaning forwards, his lack of inflection turning it into a statement.

Harry shrugged, irritated that he'd already told Malfoy so much, and hurried away up the stairs towards the crumbled wing.

_I have to deal with this myself. If I refused Ron and Hermione's help, why in the world would I want help from _him?

*

In the end, Draco chose to write to his mother, not his father, and not until two days later, and he buried his question about Potter's truth-telling in the middle of long paragraphs of chatter about Hogwarts and the repair sessions and the nice weather Scotland was having and the Headmistress.

He wondered if his mother would be able to recognize the only real, true, important part of the letter anyway. She did seem disconcertingly good at figuring out things like that.

He carried the letter to the Owlery and sent it away with one of the school owls. As he watched the bird wing its way towards the horizon, he caught sight of a distant figure circling above the Quidditch Pitch. A moment's watching was enough to convince him it was Potter. No one else flew like that, with an innate and inordinate love of pure _motion_; he made little unnecessary flourishes that Draco had never seen anyone else make, because they might be tipped off the broom if they did. But for Potter, it seemed as if making those motions was part of life.

Draco stood there watching him for a long time, his arms folded on the windowsill, his forehead cooled by the breeze blowing in, wilder and brisker at this height than it was through the window of his rooms.

He thought of nothing at all for long moments before he made his decision.

*

_Thought doesn't work. Maybe flying will._

Harry put down his quill and stood up in disgust. He'd created a long list of reasons that he might be having trouble sleeping: stress, the realization that Voldemort was gone not really sinking in yet, being without his friends, having to deal with Malfoy. Nothing struck him as true. And then he'd made a long list of the things he _had_ done during the war: breaking into Gringotts, hiding in Grimmauld Place, being caught in Malfoy Manor, stealing Malfoy's wand, listening to Ollivander, finding the tiara, rescuing Malfoy from the Fiendfyre…

Other than that an unexpectedly large number of those things involved Malfoy, Harry had learned nothing new.

_Except that I shouldn't be reacting like this, and I don't know why I am, and I don't _want _to._

So he flung himself down the stairs to the Quidditch Pitch, and flung himself onto one of the school brooms, and flung himself into the sky.

He soared in moody circles, dipped up and down, and then swooped and wove dizzying patterns across the sky until his mind had settled into them and he could realize more calmly that he might never know the reason for his nightmares. He'd probably just have to wait until they stopped on their own.

"Potter."

And then Malfoy was beside him, hovering on a broom too, raising a challenging eyebrow.

The fight came back, and the morning two days ago. Harry sent him a glance of loathing and began to rise in a steep curve that he didn't think Malfoy would dare to mimic. Malfoy's skill lay more in his broom than his muscles.

But Malfoy followed, weaving gracefully around and beside him, and Harry's frustration increased as he realized that the idiot wasn't about to be left behind. He pulled up at last and swung around to face him. Malfoy simply pulled up, too, as if he'd been waiting for this and was relieved that Harry had stopped running away.

The notion that he _had _been running away infuriated Harry even more. "What do you want?" he demanded, noticing and not liking the undertones of desperation in his voice. "What do you fucking _want_?"

"To know why you're so angry," Malfoy said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Why are you?" Harry snapped.

"Because my father was an idiot and trying to make me live in a place where I tortured people for the summer," Malfoy said, his voice freezing. "And because I couldn't come to terms with my own weakness. Malfoys didn't surrender, I'd always been told. They were the ones in control. Well, I learned during the war that that wasn't so, and I'm still having trouble coping with the fact." He blew out a deep breath and leaned over his broom, as if he were Harry's fucking _friend _and wanted to see his face. "But you, Potter. What do you have to be angry about? You _won_."

"That's not enough!"

Malfoy came closer, and it took Harry a moment to realize that he himself was the one who had shoved his broom across the gap between them. The pleased, sly smile that lifted Malfoy's lips a few moments later infuriated him all the more.

"Isn't it?" Malfoy taunted softly. "It's sure a lot more than the rest of us have, the Slytherins you despise and probably want to kill because they didn't help you during the battle."

And that was when Harry lost his temper.

*

Draco had hoped to sting Potter into some confession of his own anger, his own inadequacy. He wasn't some wise and all-knowing hero, the way he had tried to present himself to Draco when he told him about his parents' truths and the way he saw Draco torturing for the Dark Lord. It would help if he would just admit he was _human_ for once, and couldn't deal with his dreams and his pain on his own any more than Draco could.

But he didn't expect Potter to practically leap off his broom and start strangling him.

_Again_, Draco thought, but then remembered that he was the one who had tried to choke Potter last time.

He directed the broom sideways and down, wanting to reach the ground before anything else happened. Potter was in a bad position for choking him, anyway. He had landed sideways, and was mostly occupied with trying to get a better angle, his attention wavering between his knees around the broom and his hands around Draco's throat.

Draco sensed the ground behind his shoulders at that moment, and flipped them so that he was on top, Potter pinned beneath him, just as they half-crashed. Potter blinked, stunned, and Draco flopped down, using his weight to hold him, his elbows driving Potter's hands into the ground before he could continue the strangling.

"_Stop_," Draco whispered harshly. "A simple question shouldn't make you lose control like that."

Potter just laughed at him, or maybe choked, or maybe snarled; the sound was short and hoarse, and that was all Draco could make out. "Thought you were the one who was getting used to the idea of loss of control," he said, and drove a knee into Draco's gut.

Draco sucked in his breath and managed to go limp instead of promptly rolling away or doubling up, so that he and Potter would stay in their respective positions. _How did he do that? I thought I had his knees firmly held. _For long, silent moments, he struggled to stay still as Potter struggled to roll him off. But he was the heavier, and Potter, he thought, was as much interested in fighting his own thoughts as he was in fighting Draco. At last Potter subsided, panting, and glared up at him with eyes that shone brilliantly even in the fading sunlight as clouds moved in.

"Are you angry at yourself?" Draco demanded. "Or me, or the Dark Lord, or Hogwarts, even? Just figure that out."

"That's what I've been _trying _to do since I came here!" Potter's face was flushed bright red, his hands ripping up grass now, curling until Draco could see the white strain at his knuckles. "I _can't_. I didn't suffer during the war, why am I suffering now?"

Draco choked. He'd thought Potter meant something like that from some of his statements earlier, but hearing it said aloud was a different thing entirely.

"So you didn't suffer when you had to die to defeat the Dark Lord," he drawled. "Or when you were in the dungeons in the Manor and Bellatrix was torturing Mu—Granger. Right. You had it so _easy_. It's such a surprise that you have nightmares."

"I had it easier than you! I killed bloodlessly! I didn't have to torture!" Potter was shoving at his chest, frenzied, but from the fixed way his eyes stared past Draco's head, Draco highly doubted he had the strength to break free. "I mean, I used the Cruciatus, but I did it of my own free will—"

Draco shot a hand out and grabbed Potter's right one, which had now twisted so that he was driving his fingernails into his own flesh. He pried the fingers free with difficulty. Potter already had scraps of skin under his nails.

"Listen to me," said Draco. "Causing pain to someone else—you never get used to it. It doesn't matter if you do it willingly. It doesn't matter if you do it for a 'greater good.' It stays with you, Potter. It sinks into you, and marks you, and you start thinking about the screams."

"But I _don't!_ And I did it of my own free will! And Voldemort never thought about them!"

"Voldemort was mad," Draco said firmly. He was startled to hear himself saying the name, but it also contributed to the sense of giddy freedom that was starting to consume him. He wasn't saying these things for Potter. He was saying them because they were basic truths that his parents would never allow him to discuss with them, and because the words were pressed against his tongue and teeth, desperate, dying to come out. "You're not. And if you didn't think about hearing the screams at the time, maybe it was because they had to wait until the end of the war to emerge, yeah?"

This time, Potter's heave against him came as a complete surprise, and Draco had grunted and rolled off before he thought about it. He looked up to see Potter staring down at him, his chest moving like a bellows, his eyes so wild that Draco actually reached out to restrain him before he even thought about what Potter might do.

Potter turned and rushed away.

_Well, _Draco thought, lying on the grass and staring after him, _that was fucked-up._

*

_The screams exploded through the night, and Harry turned around. He saw Amycus Carrow lurching towards him, his mouth open, screaming the way he'd done when Harry's Cruciatus Curse hit him. He was lost in darkness and mist, and his hands were wide, and he wouldn't stop screaming._

Harry woke with a muffled cry, and realized that he was in his bed and it had only been a nightmare—the first he'd had involving the Cruciatus, though. The others all seemed to be about Voldemort trying to kill him, which was at least understandable.

_Thanks, Malfoy, _Harry thought bitterly, as he reached for his glasses, and then his wand, so he could cast a Drying Charm on the sweat that covered his body. _Thanks a whole sodding lot._

He sat on the bed, with his head in his hands, and tried to reason out what had happened. He didn't feel guilty for cursing Amycus that way; he'd do it again if he had to. He hadn't sat around regretting it or musing on the state of his soul, the way Malfoy seemed to assume he did.

But he couldn't forget it, either, and now an emotion like bile ate through him. He was less concerned about the effect on Amycus, who'd been a Death Eater, than the effect on him. What if he went around not regretting the Cruciatus for the rest of his life? Would he tell it as just a normal piece of the story about the war, without feeling any guilt? Would he do it to someone else because he thought he or she deserved it?

_I don't want to do it again. I don't._

But the fact that he hadn't regretted it at first remained.

And now he thought he might understand why the Headmistress was being so gentle with him. She'd been there when he cursed Amycus. Whether she thought he was more affected than he let on or not affected at all and only waiting for the crushing blow of someone who would mention it, she had reason to treat him like he was fragile.

_I'm not, _Harry thought mutinously, and lay back in his bed. _I'm not._

And he didn't think he could talk about this to McGonagall, or Madam Pomfrey, or any Mind-Healer they might send for. They'd come in with all sorts of assumptions, and Harry couldn't explain the tangled mess in his head well enough. He needed someone who'd actually cast the Cruciatus, someone who flinched from the memories of it even if he didn't flinch whilst it was happening—

Someone like Malfoy.

_No, _Harry thought in confusion. _He was the one who brought this up. He was the one who taunted me with it…_

He spent some hours battling himself before he fell asleep again, but his one conclusion was that he would not seek out Malfoy.

*

"Malfoy."

It had taken Potter a week to seek him out again, but it had happened, as Draco had been sure it would. The rawness between them was like two wounds being rubbed together; once it began, it would be harder to ignore than to continue.

_Or like two cocks being rubbed together. _

Draco bit his lip, but he had been trying to permit himself more impertinent thoughts and ones that his father would disapprove of in the last week, since he had received his mother's letter saying that, yes, she had saved Potter, and lied for him to the Dark Lord's face, and that she had done that because Potter had been able to reassure her Draco was alive and in Hogwarts. He wouldn't give up the freedom of his mind just because it made it a little harder for him to turn around and meet Potter's gaze.

_Harder!_ snickered a voice in the back of his head.

_Good God, I'm childish, _Draco thought, but then he realized that he couldn't remember the last time he had acted like a child, and decided that perhaps he was past due for some hours to act like one.

"Yes, Potter?" he asked, making sure to keep his voice calm and normal. Potter stood a short distance from him, his arms folded and his glare growing more and more pronounced as he looked at Draco.

Strangely, Potter flinched then, and looked away, his eyes falling to the floor. "I've had nightmares about the Cruciatus," he said, hurrying through the words as if they were shameful. "I want to know how you—how you dealt with them."

Draco looked at Potter in silence for long moments. "About its being used on you and your friends, or about you using it?" he asked.

He didn't really know why he was helping Potter. Except that—Potter had helped him escape from the Fiendfyre, and he had told the truth about Draco's parents. Even the fights had helped, in a weird way.

"About using it." Potter clenched his fists in front of him and abruptly broke, spinning around to punch one of them into a wall. Draco winced as he heard the crack of something breaking or at least popping, but Potter didn't even seem to notice. "Amycus deserved it. I know he did."

"Yeah, he did," Draco said, thinking of some of what he'd witnessed during the school year. Turning Seamus Finnigan's bones into liquid and freezing them again into odd positions had been the least of it.

"Then why am I dreaming about it?" Potter spun around again and stared at Draco, as if he expected him to have an answer.

"Because it scarred you, and the scars are bleeding," said Draco. _Really, Potter, it's that simple, and if you weren't caught up in the mindset that you couldn't ever suffer because you're such an enormous hero, this would be easier for you. _"You're going to have nightmares. You're going to hurt. You're going to need Dreamless Sleep Potion, and letters to f-friends—" he had almost said "family," and then remembered who he was talking to "—and fights and screaming and flying to cope with it. I do."

The last words were the hardest to add, but Draco added them anyway. It was possible that he didn't feel his debt to Potter would be fulfilled until he said them.

"I don't want to take Dreamless Sleep Potion," Potter said tiredly, rubbing his face. His eyes blinked with slow exhaustion in the wake of his hand's motion, which brought home to Draco how completely _un_fit he looked to be up and doing any kind of work. _McGonagall would force him to go to the hospital wing and get some Dreamless Sleep if she was smart. _"And my friends have suffered enough already."

"Then that leaves fights and screaming and flying," Draco said. _And maybe something else_.

But that was his backbrain speaking again, and he didn't have to listen to it the way he had to listen to his own thoughts about his parents.

"Yeah," Potter said. "It does." Abruptly, he gave Draco a thin smile like the slice of a knife. "What do you say you meet on top of the Astronomy Tower at four?"

Draco lifted his chin. "If you think you're going to push me off—"

Potter interrupted him with a snort so loud that Draco couldn't actually pretend to be afraid anymore. "Be there, or not," he said. "But I think it'd be more fun to have someone to make noise with."

And he walked away before Draco could ask him what he meant, or for that matter, before he could make up his mind whether he wanted to go.

*

Harry tilted his head back and swallowed a deep gulp of Firewhisky. Madam Rosmerta herself was on holiday—anything to get away from the shattered and silent Hogsmeade, Harry reckoned—but she had left a niece behind who was only too happy to let the Chosen One have whatever kind of liquor he wanted.

And he was damn well going to get drunk and make a lot of noise, the way he had said he would, whether or not Malfoy ever showed up.

He dropped the bottle at his feet, because he had finished it, and then walked to the edge of the Tower. The clouds that had been closing in, slowly, for several days were dripping rain now, but not enough to drive Harry back inside. Of course, he didn't know if anything would be enough to do that now that the boiling emotions were working their way from his gut and his heart up to his throat and his head.

He screamed.

At first, it was a wordless cry, just a bunch of snarling and choked half-sounds and the starts of exclamations that Harry held back because they'd be too personal. But then he listened to the echoes of his voice drifting around above the Forbidden Forest, and heard the way they bounced from the stones, and listened to the crackling and fizzing of wards that McGonagall had put up to keep anyone from falling off the Tower, and he just let himself go.

He was still screaming incoherently, but there were words mixed up in it now—curses directed at Voldemort, damnations for his parents, anguished questions about what the fuck he was going to _do_ that hurt like shattered glass coming up his throat, and raw sobs that came near to strangling everything else. Harry pitched to his knees and went on screaming with tears running down his face. They were tears of anger and frustration, though, not sadness. He couldn't imagine being sad again, right at that moment. He pounded a fist against the stone and heard something else pop. He felt a rush of mean gladness. That was _fine._ He'd healed the injury he got punching a wall earlier today, and he'd heal this one, too.

Hands gripped his shoulders, and Harry lunged against them, certain they were going to pull him back.

But Malfoy knelt down beside him instead, and wrapped his arms around him, and only rocked him whilst Harry went on screaming. Harry thought he kicked or punched him a few times, but if he did, then Malfoy never saw a word. He just stayed there, and said nothing, and perhaps shuddered in disgust because Harry's display was too emotional and undignified for him, but he, and this was the main point, _said nothing_.

And finally Harry slumped, the last tear cried, the last word wrung out of him, and just lay there, feeling the coolness of the stone under his cheek and the living warmth of the body behind him, and enjoying the contrast.

He closed his eyes.

*

The first thing Draco wanted to know was why he'd woken up cramped and hurting on the top of a tower with cold wind blowing through his hair and an intractable weight in his arms.

Then he blinked, and remembered.

And smiled a little, because hearing Potter scream had been…cleansing.

He ran a hand through the hair shoved against him, and the hair rolled over and looked at him with bright green eyes. Potter's glasses were smeared with something white, which Draco thought might be snot; he would be awfully amused if it was. He reached out to wipe the stuff away.

Potter caught his hand and looked at it in silence. Draco raised an eyebrow, wondering what he wanted, but not much caring. Potter was only turning his hand over and over in silence, after all, examining the nails and the calluses. Perhaps he was looking for a sign of the hand that had cast the Cruciatus.

_He'd look at his own hand, if he was looking for that. _

Then Potter looked up, caught Draco's eye, and flushed. But he didn't drop his hand. Instead, he shook it hard, once, and then sat up and turned away, facing the outer battlements of the Tower as he cleaned his glasses.

But he still didn't let go, even though it meant he had to do an essentially two-handed task one-handed.

Draco leaned back on the stone, wincing as his back and legs complained, and thought he could get used to this.

*

It worked, Harry thought, because they didn't _talk _about it.

Malfoy nodded casually to him when they passed in the corridors. He worked beside Harry in silence when they started repairing the wall again. He spent most of the meals in the Great Hall discussing paintings with the Ravenclaw girl, or speaking in a sulky-sweet voice to the Headmistress to get himself reassigned to tasks beyond just cleaning and building, or asking Harry casual questions that had nothing to do with the Astronomy Tower or the Quidditch Pitch or nightmares or what Harry had admitted to him about his visions and Malfoy's parents.

But there were other things, too, other things in the silence.

The next time Harry went to the top of the Astronomy Tower with Firewhisky, Malfoy was there before him, and he had a much better quality of Firewhisky, along with other drinks. That night, Harry tasted elf-wine for the first time, and learned how to lose himself in the whirling silver patterns it created, as well as how to sit side-by-side with someone, practically hip-to-hip, and stare out over the Forbidden Forest, and drink, and say nothing at all.

When he saw Malfoy flying above the Pitch, he got a broom of his own from the school shed and went to join him. Malfoy released a Snitch, and they chased it for hours; Harry thought they never made any noise other than perhaps grunts and hissed curses between their teeth when the Snitch got away from them.

He watched from a distance for a little while, timing Malfoy's movements, and then accompanied him to the infirmary without warning when Malfoy next went to get his carefully measured doses of Dreamless Sleep. Malfoy raised an eyebrow, but other than a faint smile, with a mocking edge to it—there would _always _be a mocking edge to it, Harry was coming to accept now—he made no commentary on Harry's asking the matron for some of the potion, too.

He wrote out a long description of his nightmares about Amycus Carrow, and addressed it to Draco. He never sent it; why would he? He didn't trust Malfoy that much, and his last name was still the one Harry called him by. But writing that out, seeing the name _Draco _standing unadorned at the top of the page, made Harry stand beside the table and caress the paper for a few minutes before he tore it up.

The weeks turned past, glittering. They were in the middle of July soon, and then past it, and Harry longed for everything to stay exactly the same, the heat and the silence. He'd never had a summer like this, an _unbroken _summer, full of long days that repeated each other, the way he'd understood dimly from books and telly that summer was meant to be.

And then there came the night of his birthday.

*

Draco had been watching Potter for a few days, curious to see what he would do about his birthday. Of course it was a day of celebration all over the country; Narcissa had mentioned in her latest letter that even they had felt compelled to put up a few golden banners and likenesses of Potter (though that was more for the sake of the Aurors investigating them than anything else). The Headmistress waited, too, eyes on Potter at every meal now.

But Potter said nothing, and continued to work as though he didn't care he was approaching the age of eighteen—or, really, that he'd _survived _to the age of eighteen.

He was surviving, Draco had to give him that. But he didn't seem to do anything else. He just built and cleaned and studied the wards that McGonagall asked him to study, in preparation for the complex rebuilding that they'd have to do when the summer neared its ending. But he didn't do anything spectacular since the screaming on top of the tower, and he seemed to deliberately avoid the little conversational opportunities that Draco thought _he_ was leaving for Potter, in the way he communicated silently when they flew or the way he joined Potter rather than did something else.

Potter had to go beyond survival. If there was one thing Draco understood (and was still arguing with his father about in letters), it was that war left no survivors. You were scarred and broken-down, and you had to heal the scars and rebuild yourself around the broken places as much as you could, and then go on.

The thought stuck into his mind like a jagged thorn, and Draco promised himself he would do something about it later.

But first, to do something about Potter, whom Draco hated to see go unchallenged.

*

Harry was just about to swallow his dose of Dreamless Sleep for the night when an owl hurtled through the window.

_Come to the Astronomy Tower. _

Harry frowned in confusion. Usually, they never bothered leaving each other notes; they just showed up at about the same time every night, and if the other was there, it became a night of companionship. If not, then it could become a night of uninterrupted sleep, or preparation for some great Quidditch game of the future, or further study of the wards McGonagall wanted them to weave, eventually.

But maybe Malfoy had something to tell him. Maybe he was tired of the midnight meetings and wanted to stop them. Maybe he needed some more details about the truths and lies his parents had told Voldemort.

Maybe he was leaving.

Harry shivered, hating how uneasy he was with the mere idea. But he had got on before Malfoy was here—

_Though not as well_.

—and he would get on after Malfoy left. He _had _done the most important part of his healing by himself, he thought. He'd been the one to make the decisions to begin taking Dreamless Sleep, and to ask Malfoy for advice.

_That last doesn't sound very much as though you're independent._

Harry shoved the thoughts furiously to the back of his mind, and jogged out of the Gryffindor Tower, heading for the Astronomy one.

*

Draco stood up the instant he saw Potter step onto the top of the tower. He had a taste like regret in his mouth; now that he had done this, he wasn't sure it was the best tactic he could have pursued after all. But he had little time to worry about it.

He adopted the sardonic smile that served him well when he was dealing with Potter, or trying to force the idiot to deal with himself, which was more common, and held out the bottle of fine Firewhisky he'd brought. "Happy birthday," he said, in the most neutral way he knew how.

Potter froze as if Draco had offered him a poisonous snake. _Actually, no, he could have talked to that, and he'd probably be more comfortable with it, _Draco thought. This time, Potter made a deep, uncomfortable noise in his throat and shuffled his feet.

"You didn't have to," he said. "I didn't get you anything for your birthday."

"I wanted to," Draco said evenly, stepping off the blanket he'd brought along—why, he didn't know, except that vague thoughts about rawness and challenges and impertinence had been brewing in the back of his head—and advancing towards Potter. "And besides, do you know when my birthday was?"

"No. But—" Potter was clenching his fists, but not looking away. Draco could read the silent message in his rigid stance. _Do we have to do this? Must we? Can't we just pretend that everything is the same?_

"Early June," Draco said, and pressed the bottle into Potter's hand, folding his hand around it and letting it go only when he was sure Potter would continue gripping it. He might have warm feelings he couldn't explain and odd ideas swimming around in his head, but he was _not_ going to see Firewhisky that fine wasted. "The fifth of June, to be precise. So remember that for next year."

"Next year?" Potter stared at him under his fringe, glasses gone slightly askew on his face. Draco's hand itched to reach out and adjust them.

"Yes," Draco said calmly. "I don't know about you, but I'm planning to be here in Hogwarts next June, and we'll probably still be in the rush of NEWTS madness, or recovering from it, but I'll expect a nice gift." He gestured to the bottle. "After all, I got you a _very _pleasant one."

"Only because you expected to share it," Potter said, and the shivering flash of his smile was everything Draco had wanted. But the next moment, the smile faded, and he set the bottle gently down on the stone beside him. "I don't know if I'll be here in a year. I don't know if I want to take my NEWTS."

Draco drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What will you do instead?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Where would you go, after Hogwarts? Or out of Hogwarts, if you don't complete the year?" Draco took another step forwards.

"I don't know." Potter was tense again, half a second away from pacing around the Tower, or turning around and flouncing back down the stairs, Draco thought.

"I know," Draco told him softly. "I'm going to work through my NEWTS, and carefully evaluate who I am now. I'll go back to the Manor over Christmas holidays and do my best to accustom myself to the memories so I can visit my parents, though I'll never live there again. I'll find a flat or a small house and stay there for a few months until I can figure out what I want to do. It'll probably be something related to Potions, but I'm not sure."

"But _what _do you want to do?" Potter demanded, suddenly the aggressor, and moved forwards in his turn. Draco restrained his grin. He knew that Potter would back away frantically if he realized what his gestures could mean.

"I don't know," Draco said simply.

"Then you shouldn't get angry at me for saying the same thing." Potter pushed his glasses up his face with a triumphant air.

"But the difference _is,_" Draco murmured, "that I'm taking some steps to figure out what I want to do with my life. My uncertainty is productive. Yours isn't."

"It could be—"

"I doubt it is." Draco stared at him steadily. "We haven't even discussed—anything, Potter, since at least the day that you asked me what you could do to manage the dreams and I told you. And, well, you've started taking Dreamless Sleep Potion and flying, but you haven't written letters to anyone or screamed since that first night. Or fought with me. What are you doing to make yourself live? Do you want to just drift along in silence for the rest of your life?"

"Yes, I want to!" Potter's voice rose promisingly, but sank to a whisper an instant later. "It would be so much easier. You know it would be."

"And what," Draco said, playing the card that he had hoped he wouldn't have to use, but which he was irritated enough by now not to care about, "would the dead say about that? Your friend Weasley's brother, and Professor Lupin, and his wife?" He had been beyond astonished to hear that the werewolf had married his cousin, but he was glad, now, that he'd learned that particular tidbit—never mind how he had learned it. "Would they be glad that they sacrificed themselves for a world where you could go on drifting?"

*

Harry couldn't breathe. Fire was racing up his lungs and up his throat and down his chest, and he _couldn't breathe._

Then the fire came out his mouth, and he could.

"Fuck you!" he shouted. Malfoy only raised an eyebrow rather than turning a hair, and that maddened Harry further. "This isn't _about _them! This is about _me_!"

"Ah." Malfoy moved a step towards him, nodding a little. "In what ways? Tell me what ways. Because it seems to me that it's about a war, and rebuilding Hogwarts, and divisions that aren't going to heal just because you managed to kill a Dark Lord."

"I died too!" Harry screamed at him. "I suffered too! I sacrificed myself to save them all, and now I should get to say what I do with my life!"

And then he stopped, and really _listened _to the echo of his words, which seemed to rebound through the stones of the Tower like a bell.

Malfoy was smiling. Harry didn't think it was a smile he'd seen before, with the edge of triumph, but directed at him in a way that invited him to share it instead of standing outside whilst Malfoy laughed meanly with his cronies.

"And there you are," Malfoy said. "That was what I wanted you to admit. That you were in pain. You've come close a few other times, particularly when you screamed, but you never said it straight out. You just dismissed it in the end, and then you didn't want to talk about it." His eyes flickered for a moment, and he shook his head. "That doesn't work, Potter."

"I don't notice you talking about your pain with me," Harry said, automatically more than anything else, because he was still numb and disbelieving.

Malfoy's eyes darkened this time. "Because I didn't choose to share it with _you_," he said coolly, "doesn't mean that I haven't been talking about it with other people."

Harry winced. Of course. Malfoy had been writing letters to his family, probably. And it wasn't even fair to say that Harry didn't have the same choice, because he knew the Weasleys would have written letters to him if he asked and eagerly read his, and he was the one who had chosen to exile himself from the Burrow, where he didn't feel comfortable going.

_I wonder, _he thought suddenly, _was that because I didn't want to intrude on their pain, or because I was too consumed with my own to even think about what I could do to help theirs? _

"You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. I just—" He hesitated. "What if I _want_ to hear about it?" he asked tentatively.

Malfoy folded his arms and lifted his head. He was the epitome of pride at that moment, but what Harry saw in his mind was Narcissa crouching over him, her nails digging into his chest, her voice shaking as she asked if her son was alive.

"Why would you?" Malfoy asked.

"For the same reason you wanted me to talk about it with someone," Harry answered, and then held his breath, wondering if he had pushed the gamble possibly too far.

*

Draco could feel his face rapidly changing. He didn't know what he was revealing to Potter, and for the moment, he wondered if that was so important after all.

He had shared some things with Potter. Not enough for Potter to ask for this, perhaps, but then, he didn't think Potter had shared enough with him to warrant a birthday gift. If they went forwards from here, it would be their _choice_. Debts, obligations, duties—Draco thought they had passed away into the silence of that summer.

He couldn't force himself on someone else.

He could accept something given.

And he could let the exact nature of "the same reason" pass away into silence, because he didn't think either he or Potter could tolerate the question at the moment, any more than wool felt comfortable on a raw wound.

"Yes," he said, without much breath behind his voice, and moved forwards a few steps.

Potter was there before him, hands eagerly reaching, snatching his and bringing them close as if he reveled in the warmth, the feel of other skin, and then he was on Draco as if he intended to strangle him again, his lips pressing clumsily, hungrily, against the side of Draco's mouth, the skin of Draco's throat.

Draco snatched at Potter's jaw and chin, trying to get a good grip, slipping continually. His teeth nipped and drew blood; he felt Potter's tongue jab into his gums with pressure enough to hurt. They staggered back and forth for a long moment, trying to keep their balance or dominate or both, and then fell down on the stones the way they had that night after Potter screamed.

Draco lost track of the ways they rolled then, both trying to get on top, except that he thought they were both careful to keep away from the stairs that led back into the Tower. Stone cut into his back, and dirt streaked across his face, and now and then he got a fleeting taste of Potter's mouth or hands, and there was scratchy cloth catching at his erection and Potter's.

It was still fucking fantastic.

Finally, they achieved a mutually agreeable position against the parapet, Draco sprawled there with his legs wide, Potter crouched in between with his own knees hunched up absurdly, and rocked and pushed and thrust. There was more access to mouth and hands and Potter's erection now. Draco made hushed, greedy sounds, and Potter responded with a softer version of the screams he'd let loose that one night.

Except that they had something like joy in them, now.

Potter's face rode a scant few inches from his, cheeks flushed, green eyes rolling and then shutting. Potter arched his back up powerfully and came, shaking as he did so, his fingers driving into Draco's shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. Draco bit him on the temptingly offered neck, and that was what knocked him into orgasm, as powerfully as a Bludger hitting whilst he was on a broom.

And then Draco leaned against Potter, and Potter leaned against him.

Potter's eyes were still shut, and he seemed drowsily content.

Draco stroked his hair and felt a twinge of the anger he'd experienced at the beginning of the summer. He and Potter could have had this long ago if they hadn't been so sodding stupid.

If there hadn't been a war.

If a Dark Lord hadn't hunted Potter, and if Draco's father hadn't been one of the Dark Lord's main supporters.

_Really, too much would have had to change._

Draco's gaze, roaming the top of the Tower, locked on the bottle of Firewhisky. It had shattered after all and lay dripping down the stairs, shards of glass around it. Draco pinched Potter, hard, on the shoulder. He yelped, his eyes flying open.

"I _told _you not to do that," Draco said, and pointed at the bottle.

"Actually, you didn't," Potter disagreed, his eyes firing. "You just _implied _it."

"When someone gives you an expensive gift for your birthday—"

"You planned to share it!" Potter shoved back and glared at him. "It was your gift, too! That's the only reason you gave it to me!"

"That has _nothing _to do with the way you treated it—"

"Who the fuck cares?" Potter interrupted impatiently, and then leaned in, grabbed Draco's chin in a painful grip, and kissed him again, mashing his lips in and uttering angry little grunts, as if that would somehow improve his kissing technique.

Draco fucking cared, but he drifted along with the thrust of the matter for a moment and kissed Potter back.

Because he understood that, shattered Firewhisky and anger and war and unused perfectly good blanket or not, there had been a triumph of sorts won here tonight.

And war left no survivors, but it might leave phoenixes.

_And to be a phoenix is to burn._

**End.**


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